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Ogyakrom: The Missing Pages of June 4th (Fireman Series) – Paperback
Kwesi Yankah is currently the Minister of State for Tertiary Education in Ghana. Until April 2017, he was Vice Chancellor of Central University, Ghana, and was previously Professor of Linguistics and Pro-Vice Chancellor at the University of Ghana. Yankah, an inimitable satirist, is a proud product of Winneba Secondary School, University of Ghana and Indiana University, USA, where he did his doctorate. Well known in literary and academic circles, Professor Yankah has been a Public Intellectual since the late 1970s when, at 27, he started an anonymous column in The Catholic Standard newspaper, under the pseudonym Abonsam Fireman. The credit for the column, in a suppressive political environment, was often mistakenly given to the two great luminaries PAV Ansah and Adu Boahen.
Later in 1986, when Yankah returned from doctoral work at Indiana University, he introduced another weekly column, Woes of the Kwatriot, this time in The Mirror which he sustained for a period of ten years. In 1996, the Ghana Journalists Association honoured him for ‘the longest running column in the history of Ghanaian journalism.’ His writings, both literary and academic, have won for Yankah various awards including the WEB Du Bois Award (GAW), the Zora Hurston Award (GAW), the Ghana Book Development Award (GBDC) and the Gold Book Award given by the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences.
The present volume represents landmarks within 22 months of Yankah’s weekly column in The Catholic Standard, from January 1979 to March 1980. It is inspired by topical issues in two military regimes (General F Akuffo’s SMC 2, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution) and one civilian government (Hilla Limann’s PNP). This compilation altogether allows a veiled peep into the most turbulent period in Ghana’s political history, Rawlings’ June 4th Revolution, including preceding events and the aftermath of the Revolution. In the words of Dr Anthony Bonnah Koomson, Editor of The Catholic Standard at the time of Yankah’s celebrated column: “The book captures a momentous era in Ghana’s immediate political history, reminiscences of which the author has sough to recreate and preserve with phenomenal linguistic skill. It presents, through satire, an accurate heartbeat of a people under intense political paralysis.”
This book makes compelling, even if hilarious, reading on Ghana’s enigmatic June 4th Revolution.
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Guns Over Kigali: The Rwandese Civil War -1994 (A Personal Account)
The world has come to know about the carnage and human suffering in Rwanda through the reportage by newsmen. Guns Over Kigali is no such reportage. It is personal account of a UN peacekeeping soldier who was in the thick of the action to bring sanity into a country that had gone berserk.
Major General Anyidoho, the author of this book, survived the mayhem and the hectic moments in Rwanda and tells the world the true story of the events as he saw them. What is valuable in his account are the lessons he draws which have profound implications for UN peacekeeping around the world. Students in military institutions, researchers in war studies, politicians, policy makers, relief NGOs and the general reader interested in international relations will find this book a compelling and very useful reading.
In Rwanda the author was the Deputy Force Commander and Chief of Staff of the UN Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) where he collected the material for this book.
₵70.00 -
…Power to the People: Reflections on Retrogressive Politics
Published in 1984…Power to the People is a doctor’s medicine for Ghana’s ills. The pill is occasionally bitter, but is coated with a generous layer of therapeutic laughter, to help its message slide gently into the appropriate organs of the national digestive system.
Presented in the form of prose, poetry and cartoons, the first part of the book, subtitled The Past, covers the Nkrumah, Kotoka, Afrifa & Ankrah, Busia, Acheampong & Akuffo, Rawlings 1979 and Limann eras. The second part, subtitled The Present, covers the first three years of the second coming of Rawlings.
In a satirical treatment of our history over almost 30 years, this book sheds a great light onto the paths that Ghana traversed in those heady years, in a form that is easy to read, reflect on and learn.
In the author’s own words, “in recording these…my hope is that others would be induced to ponder over and question loudly some of those short-comings, lapses and omissions in our national character and situation which are stifling our growth and retarding the country’s progress. If our questions get loud and irritating enough to cause discomfiture in our policy makers, then the reader wouldn’t have been bored for nothing.”
₵65.00 -
Kofi Chokosi Speaks: From Archaeology to Zoology (1985-2015)
This book provides all connoisseurs of Social Literature with a delightful array of bite-sized vignettes of man as a social animal. Kofi Chokosi’s extensive travels as a soldier have provided us with various perspectives of the enthralling human condition, whether in the military Cantonment of Burma Camp, Ghana, the hot steamy jungles of Cambodia or the lush green meadows of Southern England…next time you buy the Daily Graphic, look out for the musing of Kofi Chokosi – soldier, scholar, teacher and writer.
₵60.00 -
Retirement Musings
This collection of articles in the author’s personality captured in writing. They show his versatility and depth. General Frimpong’s writing is a model for writing crisp, straight-to-the-opinion pieces for mass circulation newspapers. But that doesn’t mean the pieces are dry. On the contrary, they shine with his sense of humour while retaining the discipline of word economy and sweet crunchy sentences.
It is especially telling that the General studied and taught at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Ghana, Legon. No subject is off limit and all thoughts are allowed! So, he discusses football, discipline, Kofi Annan, history and airplanes in this breathless book which reads like a single narrative, even though it is a collection of stories.
₵60.00Retirement Musings
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Interim Republic: Ghana – The 1st Military Junta (1966 – 1969)
When the long years of plotting by foreign powers with Ghanaian collaborators to upset governance in Ghana finally succeeded, many justification books and laudatory pamphlets and newspaper articles were published at home and abroad. Some bore pseudonames, others came forceful. The event which occasioned the potpourri was the 1st military coup d’etat in Ghana staged by a military and police combine.
The Military/Police combination which overtook the government of Ghana, the 1st Republic Convention People’s Party (CPP)-led government in that putsch, installed an administration which came to be known as the National Liberation Council (NLC).
This book sheds much-needed light on their lives and times.
₵55.00 -
A Legacy of Service to Humanity- Brig. Gen. Joseph Nunoo-Mensah
In the book “A Legacy of Service to Humanity” author Korletey Jorbua Obuadey reveals to the reader the humanitarian activities of Brigadier General Joseph Nunoo-Mensah. The book inspires all especially the youth of Africa to service to our fellow country men and women and to our nation.
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Leadership and the Challenges of Command: The Ghana Military Academy Experience
Brigadier General Daniel Kwadjo Frimpong was born on 2 February 1953 in Accra. He had his Secondary School Education at Mfantsipim School and the Ghana Secondary Technical School and had his first degree from the University of Ghana, Legon, where he also served as a Teaching Assistant for a year.
He also has an M.A. in Public Administration from Carleton University, Ottawa (Canada) and studied Strategic Planning and Management at GIMPA.
Brigadier General Frimpong had his basic Military Training at the Ghana Military Academy and the Cadets Training School in Canada and was commissioned on 21st July, 1973. He undertook a host of Professional Military Courses including the Senior Command and Staff Course in Jaji-Kaduna (in Nigeria). Brig. Gen. Daniel Frimpong has had varied experiences including service with the United Nations in peace-keeping operations in the Sinai, Lebanon and Cambodia. He was a member of the Consultative Assembly, which drew the constitution for the Fourth Republic.
He has been a Directing Staff in both Ghana and Nigeria at the Senior Command and Staff Colleges prior to being the Commanding Officer of the Ghana Military Academy, the singular experience out of which this book has emerged. He is currently the Military Attache at the Permanent Mission of Ghana to the United Nations in New York.
In this book Brigadier General Daniel Frimpong extensively discusses virtues, that is the excellences of character that is crucially important not only to military leadership and command but to all kinds of Leadership. Though his views and recommendations were derived from his experience as the Commanding Officer of the Ghana Military Academy, they apply to leadership outside the barracks.
Among the qualities emphasised are firmness, integrity and determination to adhere to principles and the ability for quick and correct assessment of unexpected situations. His analyses are incisive and convincing.
There is a lot to learn from this book on how to come to grips with quandaries of leadership.
₵40.00